Moving I guess people are getting offended at me because of my blog. I think I might try wordpress. I'll try to remain more anonymous there.  ¶ 9:37 PM 0 comments

  Dangle There is a certain kind of person here. I don't want to think that there are people like this everywhere. I want a "firm rampart" between this place and the real world (or my perception of it). But there is a certain kind of person who corrects my English grammar while I'm speaking (and making, what I hope to be, a fascinating and detailed point of fact) and you know, when I'm saying "And so the clientela system is where the modern patron-client relationship comes from." and he or she says, "Oh don't you mean, 'is from where the modern patron-client relationship comes'?" (Because, obviously, what you said is totally unintelligble.) Nevermind that the only reason we don't allow dangling prepositions is because, fuck you, it comes from Latin which never had punctuation to clarify them.

You know, I actually got into an argument with somebody yesterday that "intra" and "inter" mean about the same thing, to which he responded that, no, language has subtlety to it that a mah-toor individual could discern if he'd only respect the language. I suppose those distinctions should be left for the linguistic grundle-spelunkers of the world, but let's get down to brass tacks...

Why do we try to sound smart? Usually, I just sound retarded when I try to be smart. "I guess we really cannibalized that chair, eh man?" "No actually, we'd only be cannibalizing that chair if we were chairs ourselves and eating those chairs..." fuck! Fine. I get it. I'm not that smart. It's not even things like that that bother me. It's getting interupted not in mid-sentence, but more like, mid-word, "Well, he's the guy I've been referenc..." "don't you mean, referring? There's no such word as referencing. I don't even know what that means." (Which, by the way, I just looked it up and "referencing" is a transitive verb.) The point is, if the fucking toolshed president of the united states can say nuclearizing (And let's be clear here: Nuclear is hard to say, so people often say Nucular. It's okay. We know what they mean. Just like when people say "Super-fullous." It's actually easier than saying "super-fluous."), then I ought to be able to say referencing.   ¶ 11:36 AM 1 comments

  Beat Cuisine, Installment 1 Ryan's Late-Nite Steak and Eggs:
(aka, "all caught up in the sticky juices of amore")




You will need:

• one GFS pre-made frozen hamburger patty
• eggs, 2
• A-1, 1 tbsp of
• Lawry's seasoning salt
• water, 1 tbsp of
  
• vegatable oil, 1 tbsp of
• skillet with lid
  
• any other ludicrous shit you normally like on your eggs/burgers
  

Steps to perfection:

1. Thaw frozen patty
   
2. Season it and add oil and A-1
3. Crack open the eggs
4. Cook till the meat is rare and the egg whites have started to solidify
5. Add water and cover for a minute or so
6. Serves ONE hungry dude

mmmm...that's G-E-W-D, gewd! note: I reccommend a good bowl of super-sweet oatmeal to ensure safe passage of this dish.
  ¶ 1:04 AM 0 comments

  New Band I am starting a new band.

If it were up to me, and I'm sure it's not, I'd call us "Beat Eclectic."

Line up:

Jed Becker: Keyboards, programming

Tory Moul: Vocals, keyboards

(tenatively) Evan Moran: Lead Guitar

Me: Guitars, vocals, banjo, lap-steel, harmonica, programming

I'm in the process of writing more stuff. Mainly just progressions, riffs, and lyrical snippets.

The project looks like it's going to move into a Broken Social Scene + Flaming Lips thing...but I dunno...maybe mellower. Of course, Tory's jazz experience will weigh upon the sound. My folk and country sensibilities will invariable pop up. Jed has programmed a lot of stuff before and I'm going to learn the process soon. But all drums and bass and suchlike will be programmed.

First show will be the Battle of the Bands. Then I think we'll play the next Black Sheep Show at Savarinos. From there, who knows. We'll see how it goes.  ¶ 4:43 PM 0 comments

  Solidarity and the New Order of Things When my senior friends graduated last May, I thought, gee, I wonder who I'm going to hang out with. So I planned. I planned to hobknob with the Phi Mu Alpha guys and "run with their crew" some. I thought it would be nice to have their support, chill with like-minded dudes and maybe even hang out with some ladies.

For various reasons, that whole scheme fell through. Or I lost interest in it. That is to say, when I saw most of them file into IV one Thursday night, I lost interest. There are some good guys there, but shit, what was I thinking trying to pine for their interest?

But no worries. Guess what happened? The Beat crowd has mixed with the Bench crowd. And they're generally fun people. Emrys Van Maren (or as I've dubbed, the MPU [Mobile Party Unit]), Patrick Whalen, Greg Moore, Kristi Nickles, Naomi's housemates, et al. are all pretty sweet. They have modest-sized parties and sit around campfires and listen to me play guitar! The void has been filled.

A new snackbar solidarity has emerged as well. Everybody seems to know everybody. (I would add further comment, but the only adjective I can think of is "cool.")

More items, cool and uncool:

• The kilt-guy keeps asking to rub my head. I turn him down repeatedly.
• I've been enjoying drinking on the porch carbuncle-free. Not that I ever had carbuncles...er...you know who I'm talking about.
  
• Dr. Tsao takes us (Econ, Tony, Vanyle, Jack, Oatess and me) out to the Hunt Club after film class on Wednesday nights. And pays.
  
• Chase's friends, Erin and Laurel, come over and bake us cookies on Tuesday nights.
• Karen Miller and Kate Cook clean our kitchen. Often.
• Stacy Edwards is back, for better or for worse.
• Econ told me how to freebase DXM, for better or for worse.
• Dylan buys tons of shit.
• (italics indicates what Dylan has purchased on Ebay) We have two kittens named Rook and Claire (or Gary and Len...I raise these cats all summer and Luke has the gall to rename them the day I get here), as well as a couple outdoor cats named Mr. Fluffins and Smokey Balls; we also have an organ, a drumset, a sundry of stringed instruments, a trombone, a waterbed, a nordic track, a shit-kicking sound system, a couple bats, a host of uninvited rodents, a bug-zapper, two hookahs, and a shit-ton of burritos in our freezer. We still have a lot of room.
• Chase, in a whirlwind of disgust and perturbation, rearranged the living room. It looks great, and it's more comfortable and roomy now.
  
• Vanessa and Kyle, in case you didn't know, are no longer "in vanyle." They made it official a little while ago.
• The dishwasher works. Sort of. Luke fixed it.
• Here's the link to Nick's story on me. It's pretty good.
  

At any rate, things have changed a lot. I look forward to seeing Lee, Silliman, Hugger, Alexis and company next weekend.  ¶ 1:23 AM 1 comments

  Assessment There will be an article on my album in the forthcoming Collegian. The story is about 250 words, but I realize I haven't really given a synopsis of it myself, and, though I respect and thank Nick for his unsolicited interest, I think it's a good idea I talk about it.

My mother told me that she was allocating some of her inheritance for me to record a cd of my songs. From the start, I realized that, though I didn't have to, it would be nice for the record to serve the interests of more than just myself. Therefore, the songs that ended up on it were significant to other people.

For instance, "To Fall" is a song that I probably wouldn't have recorded if my mother hadn't encouraged me. I also would have ended up in a different studio if my father hadn't vouched for Guitar Sound in Coleman. Both recomendations were good decisions in the end.

The album was recorded, produced, mixed, and mastered and the album art was layed out in a grand total of 55 hours. Not unthinkable. Bad Company recorded Bad Company in six hours. But seriously, 55 was only really a start and I would have taken 250 if I had the money and time.

I believe the effort is the best I could do in 55 hours. If I had more money, more time, wasn't a smoker, read more and knew more about music, I think it would have been better.

Hillsdale is a rotten place to play music in. But then again, so is New York. The project isn't and really can't be about making money or becoming popular. I had to tell some stories. Those stories may at times come across as heavy-handed, maybe a little critical, and perhaps they weren't fascinating stories to begin with.

With exception to a couple tracks, all the songs were rewritten at least a couple times, if not three or four. It's a habit. I write, rewrite, then abandon them after a time. I rewrote several songs that aren't on the album, so I hope you'll get to hear them at some point. They either didn't cut it at the time, were not developed enough yet, or both.

All the songs without exception are personal.

Lyrically, I would say I'm equally derivative of two musicians: Ryan Adams and Sufjan Stevens. Both are brilliant writers and they both taught me how to write stories that aren't necessarily about you, but certainly affect you in some way. On the other hand, I sound nothing like Sufjan and only somewhat like Ryan Adams.

My musical influences include but aren't limited to the following (in no particular order): Lyle Lovett, Devendra Banhart, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Daniel Johnston, Neil Young, Bruce Cockburn, Gordon Lightfoot, Wilco, Uncle Tupelo, Whiskeytown, Joanna Newsom, Jens Lekman, Destroyer, Rich Mullins, Modern Praise and Worship (unfortunate and unavoidable), Dougie MacLean, Matt McConnell, Russell McConnell, Don West, Tim West, Mark Wampfler, Marion Keith Byrd, Lamar Felter, Dave Malinich, Sandra Beyers, George Widiger, Larry Williams, Dan Miloch, MxPx, Craig's Brother, Stavesacre, and my mother.

I would like other people to say I sound like the Rolling Stones or maybe Jackie Wilson. But that'll never happen.

No pitch adjustment (auto-tune) was used in the making of this album. No modulation at all was used on any instrument. In other words, there are bad notes here and there.

Word of honor: I stole nothing but the following items in the making of this album...

...the verse chords of Bruce Cockburn's "Look How Far (the light came)," and that was only at first. The chords on there are somewhat different now, though the principal is still the same. The melody is much different as Cockburn simply speaks during those chords.

...the line "till a sweet apple grows from a sour apple tree" from "Lunita" is lifted directly out of "I Wish My Baby Was Born" the author of which is unknown. Uncle Tupelo does a nice rendition of it, and that's where I heard it.

...the main hook from "Lunita" is from the wordless meanderings of the background singers on Bob Dylan's "Brownsville Girl." I haven't actually listened to the song since I wrote it, so I don't know if it's actually the same anymore.

...the simile in the first song, "Sunlight Dialogues," is from my friend Jonathan Ault. It went like this: "Listening to her talk about her problems was like being full grown and trying to swim in a kiddie pool; you don't want to be there doing it, you are getting absolutely nowhere, and it is incredibly shallow."

...the title "Sunlight Dialogues" is also the title of a book by John Gardner. It's a decent read, but I recommend Grendel and Dan Silliman would probably recommend Freddie's Book as well.

Any other similarities are probably coincidental.

Jonathan Ault wrote the liner notes. They were pretty good considering he wrote them in half an hour or so. I edited them for content.

I find there are only a handful of people whose opinions I consistently take seriously. For one, I listened to Jonathan Ault and Matt McConnell. Jonathan particularly helped me in the rewriting process and his literary thoughts show throughout.

I rarely listen to a lot of people, including my closest friends and family. It's a bad habit. Sorry.

I certainly never listen to most people, because their opinions on my music are always so strange. Not that I get a lot of bad comments necessarily. They are just always bizarre things I never notice. For instance, if you think I take too long between songs during my set, that isn't something I really care about. If you really like the shirt I wore at such and such show, however, I will take your opinion quite seriously and probably wear that shirt for at least three or four more shows in the future.

If you think such and such song should have been on the album, that's okay. I probably will agree with you. But you know that part in Mulholland Drive when the director wants to use this one actress for the part, but the mafioso guys make sure he chooses someone else? Well, that's what choosing songs for this album was like. It wasn't completely up to me.

My top five favorite songs from the sixties are as follows:

1. "Your Love Is Lifting Me (higher and higher)" by Jackie Wilson
2. "One of Us Must Know (sooner or later)" by Bob Dylan
3. "A Day in The Life" by the Beatles
4. "Helter Skelter" by the Beatles
5. "Good Times, Bad Times" by Led Zeppelin

from the seventies:

1. "So Far Away" by Carole King
2. "Worth Believin'" by Gordon Lightfoot
3. "Life on Mars" by David Bowie
4. "Simple Kind of Man" by Lynyrd Skynyrd
5. "I Got a Name" by Jim Croce

from the eighties:

1. "With or Without You" by U2
2. "Sunday Bloody Sunday" by U2
3. "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles
4. "Most of the Time" by Bob Dylan
5. "This Charming Man" by The Smiths

from the nineties:

1. "Revenge" by Whiskeytown
2. "Hard to Get" by Rich Mullins
3. "Old Friend" by Rancid
4. "Fifteen Keys" by Uncle Tupelo
5. "We Will Not Be Lovers" by the Waterboys  ¶ 12:14 AM 1 comments

  I am all that is man It was an epic struggle. Ryan's incompetence vs. Ryan's balls. Final: Balls 3 - Incompetence - 2.

I needed a guitar - Matt gave me this shitty, Allen Korean strat knockoff, and I went to work. I replaced the tuning pegs (put some Grovers on) and pickguard (switched white to black). I ripped out the bridge singlecoil pickup and soldered in a Seymour Duncan Hotrails (allegedly the highest output pickup on the market) in its stead. I tightened the bridge coils in the back, and put a sweet owl sticker on the back plate. Furthermore, I retained Matt's transcription of the Battle of Maldon in Old English on the back plate, a picture of Matt and his cousin James on the heel and two dice knob controllers. I set the action as low as it'll go without buzzing too much, I got the intonation pretty close to right on, and I strung her up.
Now I give unto the world my first custom guitar:

ASMODEUS THE AXCALIBUR
  ¶ 10:15 PM 0 comments